In the midst of his presidential campaign, Trump has launched a new cryptocurrency trading venture that he is promoting on the same social media accounts he uses for his campaign | (Photo: Shutterstock)
Donald Trump promises to make the United States the world capital of cryptocurrencies if he returns to the White House. Fulfilling that promise will likely bring him personal benefits.
In the midst of his campaign for president, Trump has launched a new cryptocurrency trading venture that he is promoting on the same social media accounts he uses for his campaign. His two oldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, are also posting about his new platform, called World Liberty Financial, as is his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, who is married to Eric and also serves as co-chair of the Republican National Committee.
Trump has long combined his political and business interests, promoting his hotels and golf courses at the White House while selling sneakers, Bibles and shares of his social media company during his current campaign. Now, Trump has launched a lucrative new venture whose value could explode if he is elected and gains the power to push through legislative and regulatory changes that cryptocurrency advocates have long sought.
“Taking a pro-crypto stance isn’t necessarily worrisome; what’s worrisome is doing so while initiating a way to personally profit from it,” said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The success of this could be closely tied to U.S. economic policy, Libowitz said.
Cryptocurrencies are forms of digital money that can be traded over the internet without relying on the global banking system. They are typically traded on exchanges, which are marketplaces that can be used to buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrencies. Exchanges often charge fees for withdrawals of bitcoins and other currencies.
World Liberty Financial is expected to be a lending and borrowing service similar to Dough Finance, a recently hacked app created by four people listed as World Liberty Financial team members, according to cryptocurrency news site CoinDesk.
Many details about World Liberty Financial remain unknown, including the stake Trump and his family members have in it. After Lara Trump posted on her X account Tuesday about our targeting of World Liberty, her husband, Eric Trump, posted online that Lara and her sister, Tiffany, had been hacked.
During his time in the White House, Trump said he was not a fan of cryptocurrencies, tweeting in 2019: Unregulated crypto assets can facilitate illegal behavior, including drug trafficking and other illegal activities.
But Trump has since changed his stance and taken a favorable view of cryptocurrencies, from announcing in May that the campaign would begin accepting cryptocurrency donations as part of an effort to build what he calls a crypto army before Election Day to attending a Bitcoin conference in Nashville this year, promising to make the U.S. the crypto capital of the planet and create a strategic Bitcoin reserve using the currency the government currently holds.
If elected again, Trump has talked about exerting greater control over monetary policy and has suggested he would pressure the Federal Reserve to set lower interest rates. He is also promoting decentralized finance, or DeFi, which is an umbrella term for using the public blockchain space to disrupt the traditional financial world.
Trump has also talked about subsidizing the use of Bitcoin mining to increase energy production and has vowed to block the creation of a Federal Reserve-run central bank digital currency, which is a digital form of central bank money that would be available to the public. While still in the exploratory stages, many cryptocurrency advocates oppose a centrally run digital currency.
The Trump and Harris campaigns did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.
Cryptocurrency adoption could be another way for the Trump campaign to reach out to younger men, including by engaging with conservative influencers. Cryptocurrencies also appeal to Trump allies who are concerned about government influence over global markets and more broadly concerned about the reach of the so-called Deep State.
Dustin Stockton, a pro-Trump activist turned cryptocurrency influencer, said he supports the former president’s efforts in the crypto space and the upcoming launch of World Liberty Financial.
“I think the Trump family’s engagement and involvement and learning what’s behind crypto is a really positive thing,” he said. Stockton singles out the Biden administration as anti-crypto, citing SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s pursuit of companies like Coinbase and Binance.
While the White House issued an executive order on digital assets in 2022, Congress has not passed any substantive laws nor has the White House turned them into regulations. Stockton said the Biden administration’s lack of clarity in written rules, as well as the SEC’s forceful enforcement of crypto firms through a series of lawsuits, indicates a lack of clarity and selective and arbitrary enforcement of regulations.
Frankly, I wish all members of the government had a better understanding of what this is all about, he said.
And JW Verret, a professor at George Mason University Law School, said Trump would not be breaking the law by launching a new project and promoting policies that would benefit him.
“I don’t see any problem with anyone, anyone in government owning assets or starting a business, in fact, I think it’s difficult for someone to regulate a particular type of business unless they work in that business,” he said.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First published: September 5, 2024 | 11:00 am IS
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